Failure to Launch: Bates Motel 1987

July 29, 2013

When FCC Chairman Minnow referred to television as a vast wasteland, I’m pretty sure this exactly the kind of thing he was afraid of.

So, my friend Eric Hollis at The Movie Waffler asked me to write a review for A&E’s new Bates Motel series for his website. No problem. Diane and I had watched the first episode and really enjoyed it so, writing the review would give me an excuse to go through the rest of the series a little earlier than I had planned. In the middle of all this Eric asks me if I had heard of the 1987 pilot that never went anywhere. I have no life, so of course I had. He then innocently asked (obviously exploiting his knowledge of the fact that I’ll pretty much watch anything once) would I be willing to review that as well. He finished his enabling process by mentioning that oh, by the way, it’s conveniently available in ten parts on Youtube. After totally failing to get Twonky to work so that I could watch the pilot on my Roku 3 box, I decided I would have to just live with watching the ’87 Bates Motel pilot in the living room on our 50 inch plasma tv instead. My review, which will count as the second entry in my Failure to Launch series is available here.

Eric’s request was actually what finally pushed me to get Failure to Launch going but, I really didn’t want to start the series with a horribly bad experience for everyone. So, instead I re-watched one of my all-time favorites, Dark Intruder, to start the series. As a result, I ended up with this wild swing in quality from one of the best to one of, actually, no, the worst failed pilot I have seen to date. I promise that in the future, entries in Failure to Launch will be a little more of an average between these two extremes. Anyway, the 50 inch plasma did nothing to enhance my viewing pleasure of this little “gem” and, Mr. Hollis, you owe me for this one.